A very interesting topic this, but I am afraid I am no proselytizer: my social circle is limited quite on purpose for all the right reasons, my family is made up of women with the exception of me, most of my working colleagues are handled remotely via emails/Skype/phone calls, face to face meetings are of an ad hoc and rarely regular, the office is staffed with mainly women adminstrators and I have a young hungry graduate to do my work for me now, but I certainly don't want to influence his style choices.

But yes, I dress in the Ivy style tinged with elements of Englishness which I adopted throughout the 90s, and it would be nice if people recognised this as my chosen style, but I am not dumb enough to believe my audience are that sartorially aware.

No l am not a sartorial proselytizer, i'm well passed being classified according to groups. l know who l fully am now so l don't need fiction labels (titles) to be applied to who l am, l am far more complex than that.  l'll wear the fiction and play the fiction game of commerce, but it doesn't mean l am the fiction. l am not a shooman (a fiction), nor am l a Mr Joe Bloggs (a fiction), l am just a man living on the land (a truest of truth).

We are brought up as kids to want to belong to packs and have a heard mentality via the media and social pressures, and that carries on into adulthood unfortunately. But what are we really? Are we just a certain label because other people tell us so, or is there more to the story?? lt's easier to be part of the heard and identify with a label because then we don't have to think to hard about the important things like `who are we really?'

We start off as kids identifying as a fiction, but aren't we supposed to grow out of that at some stage of our evolutionary process?

Sorry fellas, i'm just philosophising again as a seeker of truth. Learning to read and write has been our downfall as a society, that's when our true wisdom and intelligence stopped and we become slaves living a life of fiction. We are all characters in a play, none of our lives are a reality, it's all an illusion created by words and titles.We run down the iliterate, but that is where the real prize of freedom and knowing truth is (the alphabet are letters used to create the fictions to pass off as a reality, that's why the alphabet is satanic and will lead us to destruction like with all previous thriving societies). End of ramble before l get carried away.

The systematised thinking is all a lie to who we really are. lt makes us betray ourselves, that's why l will never ever be a sartorial proselytizer ever again.

Last edited by The_Shooman (2013-05-04 10:47:11)

Difficult question.

I dress in what can be described as classic menswear style and would be happy if more men chose to adopt it. However, I would not enjoy someone copying my style, but have no such problem with them adopting my approach.

So, I'm not sure whether that makes me a proselytiser or not.

I dont discuss clothing with people in person, even when they ask. Which is why I am something of a Lonely Boy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_426RiwST8

Not too much lateral movement in flat feet dancing which this is clearly derived from. White Appalachians do not use much hand or body movement, but their black counterparts do. See Alan Lomax's Appalachian Journey for great samples.

And no I do not care what other people wear and I do not expect most people can read clothes, so dressing to give some impression of belonging to this group or that would be futile.

Interesting. It might be that that was an interpretation of a re-imported style. After all, much of the folk music Cecil Sharp bagged in the Appalachians was forgotten in the Isles. His reintroduction of the material helped spark the folk revival. There followed much revived interest in other forgotten folk art subjects.